Looking ahead

“If you want me removed,” Renato Corona told a television station last Monday, “kill me.” That was before the impeachment began and the cameras started rolling. As soon as they did, the first thing that came to my mind was, “What for?” Why bother to kill the dying?

Despite Corona’s remarkable display of a poker face last Monday—his expression, one of stony detachment if not profound boredom, never changed the whole time—he struck the image of someone in the advanced stages of a fatal disease. Particularly after pictures of the posh houses he owned flashed on the screen.

Of course the prosecution lost some points with the public last Tuesday for seemingly being unprepared. I say seemingly because it had prepared for Article 2, not Article 1, and was about to present its case when the matter of sequence was brought up. Why shouldn’t it be allowed to present its case in any sequence it wanted? The Senate itself agreed, demanding only that prosecution apprise the senator-judges of its plan of attack so they could be prepared to deal with it.

Easy to see why prosecution should want to improvise and begin with Article 2 first rather than Article 1. Article 2 has to do with Corona’s ill-gotten wealth and Article 1 with his bias for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in his decisions. The second will only box prosecution in a legalistic discussion of the dynamics of decision-making in the Supreme Court, with defense claiming it is always collegial. The first is by far the more popular issue, one that has connected strongly with the public. You see that in social media and text messages. And that was the highlight of prosecution’s opening statement, the very graphic parading of Corona’s houses before the public.

It puts forward prosecution’s strongest suit, which is that line, “Ano ang pagkatao ni Corona?” You prove that Corona is corrupt to the core and the rest follows. It is a particularly strong line, as I suggested yesterday, also because it reminds people that the point is about fitness. The point is about whether Corona is fit or not to be chief justice. The office is one of the noblest, loftiest in the land; its current occupier is one of the crooked-est, wretched-est one in the land. The contrast between high and low is murderous.

That is why I can’t see how Corona can survive this impeachment. It won’t take long before the ironies sink in, and I can only hope prosecution has the imagination, and talent, to hammer them home. You can’t have a greater irony than that the Chief Justice has been put on trial. The irony in Erap’s trial was that the hero of the movies should find himself the heel of real life, that the poor man with the heart of gold who fought the rich and powerful with fists of justice should find himself on the side of the rich and greedy grinding the lowly with the boot heels of corruption. The irony in Corona’s case is that the one person this country presumes to be the font of wisdom should be seen as the wellspring of vice, that the one position the people regard as the scourge of the corrupt and ungodly should be the one harbor offering refuge to the corrupt and ungodly.

The title of the impeachment itself oozes with that irony: “Ang paglilitis.” “The trial” doesn’t quite capture it. Indeed, here is where Filipino, or Tagalog, takes on far more resonance, particularly in AM radio. “Chief Justice” doesn’t quite exude the same magisterial air, or aura of stern benignity, as “Punong Mahistrado,” which of course derives from the Spanish “magistrado,” itself redolent with majesty. For the Punong Mahistrado to be the subject of a paglilitis, for the very high to have fallen so very low, that is the stuff of morality tales.

There’s another reason why I don’t think Corona will survive this impeachment. That is the position the senator-judges find themselves in. For all Juan Ponce Enrile’s exhortations for them not to pander to the public, for all his strenuous attempts to evoke an aura of impartiality in his newfound court, the impeachment court will be decisively influenced by public opinion. That is so not just to go by their record, though that is huge enough in itself. Nine of today’s 23 senator-judges participated in Erap’s impeachment trial. They are Enrile, Tito Sotto, Joker Arroyo, Frank Drilon, Gringo Honasan, Loren Legarda, Serge Osmeña, Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Manny Villar. Except for Arroyo, who was chief prosecutor then, and Villar, who had initiated Erap’s impeachment as Speaker of the House, the rest were senator-judges. But only in name: They were pretty much defense and prosecution there.

But more than this, that is so because next year is election year. The impact of this impeachment on the political careers not just of the prosecutors but of the senator-judges will be incalculable. A conviction paves the way to putting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo behind bars, an acquittal makes it the hardest thing to do. The senator-judges who acquit Corona will be seen by the public as having conspired, like Corona himself, to keep Arroyo out of jail.

That public will be voters next year. They won’t need to mount another People Power to register their protest, they can do that perfectly well at the polls.

I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the trial won’t last very long and will end in Corona being convicted, the Senate crowing about the triumph of justice afterward. A cynical view of things to be sure, but I suspect not far off the mark. And not without sublime irony, if not poetic justice. A Chief Justice who has decreed the fate of others from cynical motives now lies at the mercy of people who will decree his fate from electoral incentives.

“If you want me removed, kill me”?

Again, why bother to kill the dying?